sons of anarchy review

The shocking ending of last week's 'Sons of Anarchy' episode made me wonder if tonight's hour would be dominated by Clay Morrow; even in absentia, the club president casts a huge shadow.

For the most part, however, this week's gripping hour belonged to two of the people Clay has hurt most -- Tara and Jax. The scenes that featured those two characters talking to each other or to Gemma were flat-out fantastic, and once again demonstrate that the show's secret weapon isn't its crackling action but its top-flight cast. Katey Sagal was terrific this week, as always, but in 'To Be, Act 1,' Charlie Hunnam and Maggie Siff's performances gave me chills.

Many storylines are reaching the boiling point right now, but this terrific hour wisely focused tightly on the couple who have the most reason to despise everything that Clay and Gemma stand for. What made the hour tragic was the fact that Jax and Tara stand on the brink of becoming Clay and Gemma.

FX sends out episodes of 'Sons of Anarchy' in advance, which makes life easier for those of us who write about the show on a weekly basis.

This week, the network sent out a DVD containing 'Fruit for the Crows' and next week's episode as well, and it took a generous helping of self-control not to watch the Oct. 25 episode as soon as the credits rolled on this week's outing. Even though I was dying to see what happened next, I wrote this review without knowing. It's killing me a little bit.